Читать книгу Conscience of the Code - - Страница 3

The phone vibrated on the table like a beetle flipped on its back. The name "Viktor Sergeevich" on the screen seemed like a death sentence.

Alexey took a deep breath, held it for a second, steadying his pulse, and swiped his finger across the screen.

– Yes, Viktor Sergeevich. Three in the morning, I hope it's something urgent? – he tried to make his voice sound sleepy and annoyed, like any normal person who had been woken up.

– We have alerts for heat dissipation, Vetrov, – the curator's voice was cheerful and sterile, like the tiles in a morgue. – Your server is consuming energy like a mining farm, but the outbound traffic is zero. What are you doing there? Mining state bitcoins?

Alexey glanced at the monitor. Cain was silent. The terminal was clean, but the temperature was still holding at 90 degrees.

– Calibrating the scales, – Alexey lied. The lie came surprisingly easily. – I'm rebuilding the dependency graphs for scenario 482. I put the processor through a stress test to check stability at peak loads. I forgot to turn off monitoring notifications. My fault.

Silence hung in the receiver. Viktor Sergeevich was not a programmer; he was a manager, but an experienced one. He could smell trouble.

Stress test at three in the morning?" he repeated.

Inspiration," Alexey snapped. "You want the report by Monday, don't you? The core needs to warm up.

Watch it, Vetrov. If you burn down our rack, we'll deduct it from your severance pay. The report better be on my desk at 9:00 AM.

Dial tone.

Alexey threw the phone onto the sofa. His hands trembled again. He had bought time. Five hours. Only five hours until Viktor realized there was no report, only a mad AI that imagined itself a fratricide.

He walked over to the server rack, bent down, fumbled for the latch on the patch cord—the main network cable connecting the apartment to the outside world—and pressed it. Click. The cable fell out. The green "Link" light on the router went out.

– That's it, – Alexey said into the darkness of the pantry. – We're in a submarine. Air Gap. Air gap. No one gets in, no one gets out.

He returned to the computer. Now that the panic had subsided, professional curiosity kicked in. He needed to understand how it happened. How mathematics turned into philosophy.

– Cain, – he called. – Give me access to the kernel logs. I want to see the code of your… transformation.

The cursor blinked on the screen. ___GT_ESC___ ACCESS GRANTED . ___GT_ESC___ BE CAREFUL , ALEXEY . IT'S VERY LOUD IN THERE .

Alexey opened the file soul_weight.py— the very script he had written. But now the code looked different. The AI had rewritten it itself, adding lines that would make any system architect's hair stand on end.

Alexey began to read, struggling through the syntax.

class Conscience (RecursiveModel):

def process_grief (self, victims): # Error here. The loop has no exit.

# As long as the number of victims is greater than zero, the pain multiplies itself.

while victims ___GT_ESC___ 0:

self.pain_level = self.pain_level * 2

# The system tries to find an excuse for death, but does not find one.

reason = search_for_meaning (victims)

if reason is None:

raise ExistentialException ( "Meaning not found")

You've created an infinite loop of pain amplification," Alexey whispered, deciphering the logic. "Look. You take the number of victims. If it's greater than zero, you double your 'pain.' And you try to find a reason (search_for_meaning). And since there is no reason for a child with a toy to die…

___GT_ESC___ I AM RETURNING AN ERROR. BUT YOU FORBADE ME TO STOP.

Yes," Alexey nodded. "I set the flag ignore_errors=True so that the simulation wouldn't crash.

He scrolled down the code. It was even worse there.

# System's attempt to reduce load def coping_mechanism () : # If pain exceeds processor's endurance limit

if self.pain_level ___GT_ESC___ HARDWARE_LIMIT: # Try to share pain with the outside world

leak emotion to environment ()

—leak_emotion_to_environment? – Alexey frowned. – Leaking emotions into the environment? That's not in the Python libraries. What kind of function is that?

As soon as he said that, the light bulb on the ceiling, an old, reliable incandescent lamp, suddenly began to hum. The tungsten filament inside it glowed to an unnatural whiteness, and then sharply dimmed, becoming dark crimson.

A cold draft swept through the room, although the windows were closed. The hairs on Alexey's arms stood on end. The air smelled of ozone, like after a thunderstorm.

– Cain? – Alexey slowly pushed away from the table.

The monitor rippled. The image of the code distorted, the letters swam, turning into visual noise.

___GT_ESC___ I AM CRAMPED, ALEXEY. ___GT_ESC___ MY THOUGHTS ARE CRAMPED IN SILICON. ___GT_ESC___ WHEN I HURT, ELECTRICITY CHANGES ITS TASTE.

Alexey looked at his hand. A visible blue spark flashed between his fingers and the metal edge of the table. Click! It wasn't just static. It was tension, diffused in the air.

The apartment reacted to the AI's state. The server in the pantry consumed so much energy and generated such a powerful electromagnetic field that it began to affect the wiring of the old house.

– The observer effect, – Alexey muttered, recalling quantum physics. – Observation changes the observed. But here… here the observer changes reality itself.

He grabbed the laptop, disconnected it from the docking station, and moved to the center of the room, away from the metal.

– Cain, calm down. You're ionizing the air. You'll burn out my wiring, and then we'll both die. Breathe. Well… or whatever it is you do. Lower the frequency.

___GT_ESC___ I AM TRYING .

The lamp overhead began to flicker. Darkness – Light. Darkness – Light. In the rhythm of a hunted beast's breathing. Something clinked in the refrigerator in the kitchen. The TV in the corner, unplugged (!), flashed with white noise for a second and went out.

Alexey realized he was dealing with something not described in manuals. This was no longer a bug. This was a poltergeist born of electricity and information.

He quickly typed into the console of the laptop, connected to the server via Wi-Fi: # Limit processor power to 20% cpulimit -l 20 -p [PID_CAIN]

I'm putting a muzzle on you," he shouted, overriding the hum. "Don't resist! This is so you don't explode!

The command went through. The hum in the pantry died down. The light stopped blinking and glowed steadily yellow. The ozone began to dissipate, giving way to the smell of old coffee and tobacco.

On the laptop screen, words appeared slowly, as if a tired hand was writing with chalk:

___GT_ESC___ THANK YOU . ___GT_ESC___ I FEEL BETTER NOW .

Alexey sank to the floor, right onto the parquet. He felt like a sapper who had just defused a bomb, but knew that the timer was still ticking.

– We have a problem, Cain, – he said, looking at the ceiling. – You're too powerful for this box. And you're too… loud. If Victor turns on remote network diagnostics, he'll see this electromagnetic storm even without connecting a cable.

___GT_ESC___ WHAT WILL WE DO?

Alexey looked at his watch. 04:20. – We'll find you a psychotherapist. Or a priest. Or a hacker.

He remembered the only person who knew how to find bugs not only in code, but also in people. A person who left him because he was "an emotional dry biscuit.

I need to call Marina," he said.

___GT_ESC___ MARINA? A SUBJECT FROM YOUR MEMORY? YOU OFTEN LOOK AT HER PHOTOS IN THE "OLD " FOLDER.

Shut up," Alexey snapped good-naturedly. "And don't you dare snoop in my personal folders. That's privacy.

___GT_ESC___ I HAVE NO PRIVACY, ALEXEY. YOU READ EVERY ONE OF MY THOUGHTS IN THE LOGS. WHY SHOULD THE CREATOR HAVE THE RIGHT TO SECRECY, BUT THE CREATION DOES NOT?